What is FAIR Research Data and Software?

What is FAIR Research Data and Software?#

The FAIR Principles principles are a set of guidelines for organizing and documenting data to make it more accessible and reusable, not only by people, but also by computer systems. [WDA+16] .

FAIR stands for:#

Findable#

Accessible#

  • Data and metadata are retrievable through a publicly available communication system.

  • Metadata is always available, even if data is not due to restricted access.

Interoperable#

  • Metadata uses controlled vocabularies, is machine-readable and includes references to other metadata.

  • Data and software should use open formats whenever possible.

Reusable#

  • Metadata conforms to standards that promote reusability because it is clear to humans and machines alike.

  • Data should also come with a clear and accessible licence to regulate reuse.

Your data will benefit from higher visibility and greater potential for reuse within your research domain and the wider scientific community if you prepare and share it in line with the FAIR data principles.

You can make your research data and software FAIR by depositing them into a repository such as 4TU.ResearchData. This is because the metadata of published datasets and research software follows the DataCite metadata schema, one of the most used metadata standards. All the data and software items have a clear and accessible data usage licence to facilitate their reuse.

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